Stingrays are some of the very few truly venomous animals in Louisiana waters. I say “some” rather than “one” because four species of rays with spines on top of their tails occur off of and in Louisiana.†

Whether one loves it or hates it, a certain amount of catch-and-release fishing is here to stay. While fishermen have released some fish for a long time, the practice became high profile with the commercialization of black bass fishing through the founding of the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society by Ray Scott in 1967.

Bluefish are truly the cannibals of the sea. They eat anything and seem to take special delight in eating each other. It makes you wonder why they are still around — how they get close enough to spawn with each other before biting their paramour in half.†

Blue crabs are one of the most-beautiful and interesting creatures in Louisiana’s coastal marshes. They are pugnacious — actually downright aggressive may be a better characterization — but within those armored bodies lies some of the most delectable of all seafoods.

Yes, I know that a redear sunfish isn’t really a perch, but that along with “bream” is the generic name for the clan of freshwater panfish that includes bluegills, goggle-eyes, slick perch (green sunfish), sunperch and stumpknockers.

The glamour boy of the grouper family, the 800-pound Atlantic goliath grouper, is becoming the Gulf of Mexico’s latest fisheries management football, to be passed and punted back and forth between recreational fishermen, commercial fishermen, environmentalists and fisheries biologists.